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Cause Marketing Success Story: Jake’s Ride

Written on February 2, 2010 in Cause Marketing In Action, Six Figure Cause Marketing

jakesride

Back in September, I introduced you to my friend Beth Pfiel (@readerbean) and her nonprofit The Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia & Parkinson Foundation.

Beth had asked for my help creating their first cause marketing campaign, a pinup program with Garden of Eden, a grocer and specialty food store with five locations in New York and one in New Jersey .

Beth had a busy fourth quarter, but we recently had a chance to catch up about the results of the program.

With just six small grocery stores participating Beth raised over $6,000. Her best store raised $1,700.
In addition to being the top pinup seller, the South Orange, NJ store did a great job promoting Jake’s Ride, which raised $204,000.

Overall, Beth felt that pinups were a great way to raise additional revenue and to educate Garden of Eden employees and shoppers about Bachmann-Strauss.

Beth stressed that it’s important to get store managers committed to the cause as they are the ones who ensure employees are selling the pinups at the register.

Beth’s already looking forward to next year’s event! She’s hoping to raise more money with her friends at Garden of Eden. But she’s not stopping there. She wants to build on her success and recruit other retailers to support Jake’s Ride and take advantage of the busy cross-promotion a grocer partner offers.

Beth realizes that successful cause marketing is largely a numbers game. If she raised $6,000 with six stores, she could raise more money with 20 stores, 50 stores, 150, etc.

Good luck, Beth!

Are you planning a pinup program for your nonprofit? My work with Bachmann-Strauss and Beth became the basis for my Six Figure Cause Marketing program. I hope you’ll check it out!

Tags: Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia & Parkinson Foundation, cause marketing, cause-related marketing, garden of eden, jake's ride, paper icons, pinups

Active vs. Passive Cause Marketing

Written on October 20, 2009 in Capplause, Cause Marketing 101, Cause Marketing In Action, Cause Practices

7 Comments

wholefoods As a fan of pinup programs, especially for small nonprofits, I’m frequently asked how important the “ask” is at the register. The ask happens when you’re checking out and and cashier says, “Would you like to donate a dollar to help _________?”

To understand why the ask is so important to the success of a pinup program, you needn’t look any further than the stores you visit everyday.

“Do you need batteries for that?”

“Would you like to try Via, our new instant coffee?”

“Would you like to supersize your meal?”

They ask because when they do you usually say yes and buy more. A lot more.

The same is true of pinups. The more you ask people to give a buck or two the more people will. I call this active cause marketing (ACM).

But ACM isn’t for everyone. Some retailers see it as pestering the customer. An example here in eastern Massachusetts, and I limit it to my area because I really don’t know what they do in other parts of the country, is Whole Foods. They practice what I call passive cause marketing (PCM). And for all the shortcomings of PCM, Whole Food does it pretty darn well.

They put the gift request in a can’t-miss spot near the register where customers can decide for themselves if they want to contribute.

I ran across the pictured Autism Special Education Center pinup program at my local Whole Foods in West Newton, Massachusetts. The pitch was in a great location. Right in my line of sight on the credit card machine where I swiped my card. All I had to do was pick the card for either the $2 or $5 donation and give it to the cashier who scanned it just like any other item.

While this approach won’t raise as much money as an active pinup program, it’s a hundred times better than most passive cause marketing programs I see. Usually the donation request is far beyond passive; it’s hidden behind the gum in aisle three, or worse.

But let’s not forget how much the type of customer that shops at Whole Foods contributes to the success of this PCM program. Their average shopper is affluent, educated and sophisticated (so far it hasn’t rubbed off on me), which makes them more open and progressive about supporting causes they care about.

While this program was for autism, other PCM programs I’ve seen at the register are for food pantries, homeless shelters and especially “green” causes. Again, right in line with the interests and concerns of their yuppie shoppers.

I’ve never had success with passive cause marketing programs, but that’s not because they didn’t work. I didn’t set realistic expectations for myself and was disappointed when they didn’t raise as much money as ACMs. Now I know better.

To date, I also haven’t worked with retailers with the kind of customers that are more responsive to PCM programs. I’ll have to keep looking because Whole Foods in Massachusetts has already said no to doing a PCM for my cause.

Fortunately for me, there are a lot of other places to shop.

Tags: cause marketing, cause-related marketing, mobiles, paper icons, pinups, whole foods

Countdown to Halloween Town: Pinups to the People

Written on September 11, 2009 in Cause Marketer's Journal, Cause Practices

12 Comments

2009 HT Pinup This pinup is our fifth and has been a close companion of the Halloween Town event since it began in 2005. Single handedly the pinup has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for my nonprofit!

I’ve written before on the merits of pinup programs in general and Halloween Town’s in particular. Before I give you some additional reading, I want to admit that I’m guilty of one heinous crime: not using one consistent name for pinup programs. I’ve called them point-of-sale, paper icons, mobiles, paper plaques and probably several other names. I’m trying to stick to “pinups” from now on, but you’ll see these other names in the titles and posts I’ll suggest to you. Forgive me.

For a primer on pinup programs read:

Never Heard of Paper Icons? Listen Up (Also includes a link to an excellent post on “paper icons” by Paul Jones over at the Cause-Related Marketing)

To read about the development of our Halloween Town pinup program the past few years, check out:

Countdown to Halloween Town: The Power of Pinups (2008 Program)

Countdown to Halloween Town: Mobile Madness (2007 Program)

Secrets of a Mobile Master (2006 Program)

We just don’t do pinup programs in October. We do them throughout the year. Read about our most recent program here:

Phantom Gourmet Cooks-Up Cause Marketing Success

From reading these posts I think you’ll agree that our Halloween Town pinup program has a lot of great advantages.

It’s lucrative. This year we should top $800,000 raised since the program began in 2005 (at an expense of about 12 cents on the dollar).

Prospects can’t say no to it. Because unlike other kinds of marketing they pay for, this one is free. They only need to give us access to their stores and to motivate their register clerks to ask the all-important question: “Would you like to donate a dollar to help a sick child?”

Partners love the added benefits. Our pinup programs aren’t just glorified customer loyalty programs. We build them around multiple retailers–that offer valuable cross-promotion–and events, like Halloween Town that in 2008 had 15,000 guests. Retailers that sell pinups in their stores get a free sponsorship spot at Halloween Town that markets their product or service outside the “choir” to new converts.

It’s powerful advertising. We’ve never spent much money advertising Halloween Town. We don’t have to because the pinup does most of the promoting for us. Surveys collected at the event show that in some years as many as 1 in 5 attendees said they heard about Halloween Town from the pinup.

This doesn’t mean that pinup programs are easy to sell and are always home runs. They’re not. But over the past five years, my team and I have learned from trial and error what works and what doesn’t. We’ve boiled down all of our experiences, expertise and insights into a program that we hope to share with you just as soon as Halloween Town is over.

We’ve been successful AND lucky: six figure cause marketing has been a reality for us every year since 2005. And we’re convinced it’s not something unique to our nonprofit. Any nonprofit can do it if they are motivated, educated and in tune to the assets around them.

You can learn more about Six Figure Cause Marketing here.

Tags: cause marketing, cause-related marketing, mobiles, paper icons, paper plaques, pinups, point-of-sale